is proud to be affiliated with
A WORLD OF ACCORDIONS MUSEUM
Duane Sellman and Helmi Strahl Harrington, Ph. D. - Founders
Affilliated with the American Accordionists' Association, Inc.
The
Museum houses, displays, and restores accordion family instruments, their relatives
and predecessors. This collection benefits ARTS studies of manufacture and aesthetic
principles involved in development from earliest examples to the most modern,
from all parts of the world. Many are used in concerts or seminars, for general
public tours and for performance practice by serious students and artists.
The
Museum also houses a great number of sound recordings and music by past and present
master of the instruments. Library facilities include books, periodicals, and
independent accordion-related studies from around the world. It is the USA repository
for Hugo Herrmann compositions. In total, this institution is a research center
of unequaled breadth.
Donations to the Museum in the form on instruments, documents, artifacts, music, recordings, , volunteer time, and money are welcomed and encouraged.
The
term "Accordion" is the proper generic term for all members of this
complex family of free-reed aerophones. characteristics of all accordions include:
(1) metal reed-tongues stimulated by air turbulence (2) axial alignment to the
player's body of one or more mechanical keyboards manipulated by the fingers to
select pitches (3) folded bellows that induce airflow through the instrument,
move horizontally, and are controlled by arm-pressures that in turn regulate the
loudness of the sound emitted (4) straps that hold the instrument in the hands
or to the shoulders (5) encasements that are commonly recognized (6) ease of portability.
The
family is divided into two preliminary halves: "Diatonic" accordions
play different pitches when bellows are expanded or compressed: "Chromatic"
accordions sound the same pitch in both bellows directions. On the diatonic side
of the family are Anglo concertinas, Chemnitz concertinas, button diatonics, and
bandoneons. On the chromatic side are English concertinas, button chromatics,
piano accordions and chromatic bandoneons. All of these instruments contain many
varieties of pitch order and content differences. Accordion family instruments
vary in their dynamic range, air consumption, machining, materials, numbers pitches,
reed-blanks, and handling characteristics, which contribute to ranking classifications
known as Student, Intermediate, Advanced/Professional, Fine, and World-class.
Most manufacturers offer various quality grades within their lines, which contributes
to the range of prices involved. Accordions are not generic: in fact, they are
highly complex in quality assessment, based on scientific measurements of air
-pressure, response characteristics, and spectral-analysis of harmonics. All members
of the family may be constructed with electronic sounds, the most popular of which
are equipped as MIDI controllers.